Mikea

JUST IN: 🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran says it did not hold any direct negotiations with US.

1-0 Nottingham Forest. GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLL IGOR JESUS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH NO TOTTENHAM ARE IN MAJOR TROUBLE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE RELEGATION ZONE IS GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I believe the bull case for $LINK is straightforward, I would distill the thesis down to: 1. Chainlink continues to expand its dominant market share as the critical infra platform powering the most important crypto use cases (institutional DeFi, RWA tokenization, prediction markets, stablecoins, etc) 2. Growing demand for Chainlink's data, interop, privacy, compliance, & orchestration services leads to increasing demand for LINK tokens (native payments, programmatic buybacks, staking collateral, etc) 3. LINK is a digital commodity whose total supply is capped at 1 billion, meaning when growing demand combined with expanding supply sinks outpaces available on-market supply → buyers must raise their bids to find a willing seller 4. All 1 billion LINK tokens can only be acquired from someone who already owns it, no new units can be printed → demand-drive scarcity becomes an inherent property of the asset In short, the thesis is that $LINK becomes increasingly scarce as the value that the Chainlink platform generates is captured by the token Naturally, this story will need to prove itself over time, job's not done But the hardest part is not perfecting the economics today (this can always be fine-tuned), it's becoming the indispensable industry standard whose value is unquestionable. The economics will naturally flow from there As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt put it at Chainlink's SmartCon 2022: "Give me a hundred million users, and I will find a way to monetize them"

Cycles are a normal part of the crypto industry, what is important is what those cycles reveal about how far the industry has progressed and what next stage/trends of adoption/value creation will go on to define the industry. So far this cycle reveals two key things for me: Firstly, there have been no large risk management failures leading to large institutional failures or widespread systemic risks. In the previous cycle you had FTX and multiple lenders cleaned out through large price drops, this time around I am pleasantly surprised to see none of that or at least none of it at any system wide scale. If the crypto industry and its systems are able to successfully weather large drawdowns in price and liquidity issues then it is a more reliable place to put both retail/client capital and institutional capital. This time has been much better managed than last time. Secondly, real world asset migration on-chain continues to accelerate regardless of Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency prices, signaling that having real world assets on-chain is not tightly coupled to crpytocurrency prices but provides its own unique value that can grow irrespective of market pricing of Bitcoin or other crypto assets. We have seen RWA issuance continue to grow and we've seen leading on-chain perp markets rival tradfi perp markets for very traditional commodities like silver, especially in periods when trading in permissioned traditional markets became harder or more risky vs trading in on-chain permissionless markets. As more and more RWA data goes on-chain to make perps work correctly for more asset types and as more on-chain value is generated as RWAs themselves, I expect these dynamics to only increase regardless of crypto prices. These are both very positive signals for the assumptions I have been making about three key trends I am expecting to work together to reshape our industry in the next stage of its growth into mainstream adoption. Firstly, on-chain perps about real world assets and tokenization of the assets on-chain has unique and durable long-term value which is growing regardless of any other dynamics. It is the value of 24/7/365 markets, on-chain collateral management and on-chain data. Secondly, institutional adoption of our industry will be driven by the fundamental/technology value it provides, accelerated by access to permissionless/always on markets in DeFi, which will grow massively as a result. Thirdly, the infrastructure that will make RWAs possible will be experiencing much more demand as more of the real world finds itself on-chain. As more RWAs have to go on-chain as perps via on-chan data or tokenization itself and as those RWAs are increasingly complex in how they need to work on-chain, more systems will need to interface with chains to enable those RWAs. The first two trends are inevitable market forces that are now accelerating regardless of cryptocurrency prices, that is the real insight I see from this part of the cycle. The third trend is where Chainlink is providing the key global standards/protocols/infrastructure that is needed for providing the data, connectivity and orchestration that accelerates the first two trends. Data is what allows most RWAs to exist on-chain at all. Market data for on-chain perps e.g. on-chain silver markets, Proof of Reserves for Stablecoins, NAV for Tokenized Funds to operate on-chain and many other examples touching every category of RWAs. Chainlink is the largest provider of data to the leading blockchains by far and is successfully servicing the vast majority of DeFi for all their data needs with 70%+ market share. Our new launches with leading institutional data providers like S&P, ICE and many others put Chainlink in a similar position in the growing institutional RWA world. Connectivity to both other chains and existing backend/accounting/risk management systems is key for liquidity. The ability to connect to the other chains as a system of record/source of liquidity and to the existing centralized systems of record/sources of liquidity are key for scaling RWA adoption globally. Chainlink is the leading provider of these capabilities to institutions and has been chosen by the leading security teams in Web3 to be their official bridging provider due to a superior reliability/security track record. Chainlink is also the only system that successfully pulls TradFi payments into on-chain transactions across multiple chains, integrating existing sources of liquidity and new sources of liquidity into one interoperability layer. Orchestration is the process of coordinating multiple systems into one workflow/transaction that defines the core value an application is providing to its users. Coordinating between multiple chains, multiple off-chain systems, multiple market data sources and now multiple AIs is a key function that some system needs to play for the more advanced RWAs to function properly. The Chainlink Runtime Environment seems to be the only environment in which you can currently run a workflow that can coordinate all of these key systems into a single application, already in use by enterprises and with advanced integrations into many key systems. Orchestration has an additional critical component of creating privacy, which there are now new and exciting solutions for being built on CRE. More to come on truly useful privacy as a key feature of CRE's orchestration. If these trends continue I believe what I have been saying for years will happen; on-chain RWAs will surpass cryptocurrency in the total value in our industry and what our industry is about will fundamentally change. This shift will also lead to cryptocurrency's growth as an asset class that benefits from more capital on-chain, but RWAs is how all of this goes mainstream. I have never been more excited about our industry's potential to become the way a better version of the global financial system works to benefit all of us.

Chainlink

Crypto market price action is undeniably in the absolute gutter right now, with nobody being spared from the pain But I think what makes it particularly painful compared to prior cycles is that 1) there was no real prior alt season mania and 2) the fundamentals have never looked better In previous cycles, there was always a clear trigger for why things turned over 2018/2019 bleed was just off the back of a massive 2017 ICO mania blow off top, there was a clear need to recalibrate 2020 covid flash crash, it genuinely felt like the global economy was on the brink of collapse and it was truly over for good 2022, we had back-to-back massive insolvencies from Terra to 3AC to Celsius and cumulating with the FTX collapse, was obvious we were cooked for years to come This time around, seems somebody just tripped over a nuke on 10/10 and we've been dealing with the radiation ever since ??? truly inexplicable All the while: - We finally have pro-crypto leaders in the highest position of power in the U.S. Federal Government and regulatory agencies (Yes some parts are grifty, but still net positive by far) - A reversal of all of the toxic anti-crypto rules, guidance, and lawsuits from U.S. regulators that stunted our industry's growth for years (a very underrated development, we would have died under Kamala/Gensler's continued reins) - Clear common-sense U.S. legislation for stablecoins is now in place with crypto asset market-structure coming up next (aka protect ourselves before the next admin comes in who may not be so pro crypto) - Crypto assets becoming increasingly accessible and normalized within TradFi via ETF and futures products that bring liquidity/volume to on-shore regulated venues (healthier market = good for everyone) - Financial institutions and their executives actively evangelizing and adopting tokenization at a rapid pace (too many developments to count, TradFi more bullish than crypto natives at this point) - Stablecoins, prediction markets, and perps are breaking outside of the crypto echo chamber as a clear product market fit of crypto (i.e., we are getting beyond zero-sum games now) etc etc Ultimately, I can't help but feel like the crypto market is a rubberband that's being stretched further and further, and will inevitably snap back Not for all crypto assets and not right away, but for those have achieved clear product-market fit and have proven their value beyond a reasonable doubt, this market is becoming deeply irrational The crypto markets have always operated in extremes, like a pendulum, the market overshoots in both directions, comes with the territory, if everything was assured, it would already all be priced in already And while it sucks to take a few (or many) punches in the face along the way, my conviction in blockchains, smart contracts, and yes Chainlink, has not changed Nobody likes to see portfolio number go down, it becomes unavoidably demoralizing, but I would not be here if I didn't truly believe in what I own long-term And yes, I'm not blind to the comments I get, I know there are questions on Chainlink econ, I don’t have the perfect answers to every timeline/metric But what I will say is that any claim or perception that the goal is to maximize the value of Chainlink Labs at the expense of or in isolation of LINK holders (like with Ripple & XRP) is plain wrong Trust me, I wouldn't be such a loud and public advocate of Chainlink / LINK if I believed otherwise